


You catch my focus

by Alex_and_the_hamiltones



Series: The Chasefield Archives [2]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-13 13:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7977823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex_and_the_hamiltones/pseuds/Alex_and_the_hamiltones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What forced Victoria Chase, Queen Bee of Blackwell to write the cheesiest love letter? The simple answer can be resumed in "Max Caulfield" but it is slightly more complex than that, specially if said person wouldn't catch a hint even if it hit her face, until she finally does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What the hell is this allowed?! What the hell is that allowed?!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NightOfMine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightOfMine/gifts).



> Hi everyone! this is a prequel to one of my previous writings, and just what I think what Victoria was thinking before she finally asked Taylor for romantic advice.  
> I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!  
> Special thanks to NightOfMine for coming up with this idea.

Nobody said High school was easy, of course not but for Victoria Chase, Queen Bee of Blackwell, her current situation was truly ridiculous.  
She had everything anyone could ask for, she had all the guys drooling behind her and several girls too, she had everyone eating from the palm of her hand. Everyone but Max Caulfield, the most oblivious and distracted person ever born, and of course the girl Victoria had to crush on.  
“It is not a crush” she tried to tell herself over and over “it's only that I am… Absolutely obsessed with that nerdy hipster…”  
No need to explain how hard was for Victoria to concentrate in class when Max Caulfield sat a few seats from her own.  
That day she was trying her best to focus on whatever the teacher was saying but her eyes kept wandering towards Max. She was gazing outside the window, a dreamy smile barely visible.  
“Focus Victoria. Don't think about Max looking at the garden, or the way the sunlight makes her eyes shine, or her dumb little smile, or how cute her nose freckles look when she angles her head that way….” She muttered under her breath, sighed and looked at her notebook.  
It was impossible not to think about Max, she was just too adorable under her eyes, all about her was so compelling… But she had to focus.  
“stupid Max Caulfield, with her chill hipster aura bullshit… and her cute artsy purposely-distracted gaze…” she murmured as she scribbled on her notebook, the lines she traced beginning to damage the paper until the paper broke.  
“Max Caulfield can you please say a part of the cell and its function?” the teacher asked, noticing Max was distracted.  
“The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell” she replied with a goofy smile plastered across the face.  
Victoria had never felt a stronger urge to slap herself, because how could she be so cute and hot at the same time? Vic slammed her pencil down, she had to stop thinking about Max.  
She wouldn’t think about how attractive Max was whenever she was working with her camera, or the way she would bend down to get a good shot, Victoria wouldn’t think about how perfect Max’s lips were, and of course she wouldn’t imagine how it felt to kiss them or imagine how her beautiful doe eyes would widen as she cornered her against the lockers and- that was enough!  
She shook her head a few times “focus…”  
Still she gave another look at Max.  
“What the-? Oh for fuck sake” she breath out, practically slamming her forehead on her desk. “Why? Heavens why?”  
Max was now sitting straight trying her best to balance a pencil above her upper lip and barely lifting her hands to stop touching it, she was pouting to keep the pencil on her lip until it happened: A hiccup.  
Victoria, who had risen her face from the desk lowered it again.  
Max’s hiccups where tiny squeaks, almost like a sound a mouse would make, and her shoulders rose and fell with every hiccup, Max covering her mouth and growing read.

“I can't take it anymore! I'm suing her!” Victoria started an hour later in Taylor's room “I'm going to sue her and her parents! Hell I'll even sue her fucking plant too!”  
“Vic calm down… who and why are you going to sue?” Her friend replied, her voice hiding a mocking tone.  
“Maxine fucking Caulfield! That's who! And why? Because being that cute must be fucking illegal!” Vic plopped on her bed and covered her face with Taylor’s pillow.  
“Oh! Tori’s got a crush!” she exclaimed, causing Victoria to throw the pillow at her.  
“shut up, you asshole! you shouldn’t be making fun of me!”  
“then what should I be doing?”  
“Please help me out, I can’t keep up with this nonsense…”  
“I may have an idea or two…”  
Victoria just rose an eyebrow.


	2. Wait, what?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max notices Victoria has been acting weird lately but what will she do about it? Being Max Caulfield the answer is making a fool of herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! The waiting is finally over!  
> Jeez, this took longer to write than expected but as a professional procrastinator I'm not surprised either. Anyway, I'll keep this short, enjoy the chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it.

It had been a weird week for Max, have you ever had the feeling that someone is watching you? That had been happening to her since she entered Blackwell but in the last few days it happened all the time. It confused Max because why would anyone stare at her?  
To make it even worse Victoria had begun to act weird around her… It was not the usual Victoria Chase she had known when she arrived, always making snarky comments and judging her looks and her weird habits.  
It all began a Tuesday morning when she walked in front of Victoria and her Vortex Club clique, all of them standing in front of a classroom and Victoria leaning casually against the wall behind her.  
“Hey Caulfield! nice t-shirt!” Victoria called, but this time instead of a sarcastic smirk she was… smiling?  
Max looked at her graphic tee of a cartoon panda holding a camera; did Victoria really think it was a nice shirt? Was she really saying that her clothes were pretty?  
“I- thanks Victoria…?” she replied, almost a whisper as she looked down at her shirt again. Max looked back up and kept walking.  
She heard Taylor snicker something behind her but didn’t turn to see Victoria’s face grow redder.  
Later that day she sat beside Victoria in class, but didn’t turn to her when she sat and didn’t took off her earbuds as she pulled out a notebook. Only until Victoria waved a hand before her face she noticed she had been trying to catch her attention.  
“you were saying?” she asked, praying to all the entities she could think of she hadn’t managed to anger her.  
“Did you do… your homework?” Victoria sounded upset, Max gulped.  
“I-I didn’t know there was homework…”  
“great, at least I’m not the only one.” she heard her say, more to herself than to her, she wasn’t holding her gaze which was odd.  
“huh… okay then.” The only thought in Max brain was why did Victoria Chase talked to her twice that day, and had not been mean.

The next day she was sitting on a bench, again that weird feeling of being observed tingled on the back of her head. She shifted a couple of times and closed her eyes, completely focusing on her music. She felt a tap on her shoulder.  
“Oh dog!” she exclaimed, jumping off the bench.  
“Easy Maxine! I’m not a monster or anything!” Max knew most people would differ.  
“Max, never-”  
“Maxine, I know” she finished.  
“You scared me… I didn’t notice you sitting there.” Max added, trying to calm her heart rate.  
“I- sh- what are you listening? it must be good if you managed to ignore everything for three minutes.” Vic repeated, a weird tone in her voice, which made Max nervous. If she was mad she knew she would wreck her, did she think Max was ignoring her on purpose?  
“huh… Syd Matters. They’re good enough I-I think…” Max replied hesitant.  
“oh… I see, they’re good. I mean, Courtney says they are… it’s not like I have listened to them.” Victoria said “not that it’s something bad to listen to them… I just haven’t, or maybe I have…”  
It was weird to see Victoria stumble over her own words, let alone be that nervous around anyone. Max frowned and tilted her head slightly to the left.  
“whatever, see you around Max, bye” she stood up suddenly, patted her back twice and left in a hurry leaving behind a confused Max.  
What the hell was happening?

By Thursday Max was completely lost, Victoria had been awkward and nervous around her and she had been around her a lot lately… Was that some kind of sophisticated prank? was she actually being nice?  
“Oh my god she got abducted by aliens.” She said out loud, as she drank tea with Kate.  
“I’m sorry, who?”  
“Victoria… I think she got abducted by aliens…”  
“I was wanting to talk to you about Victoria, has she been bothering you?”  
“I… why do you say that?” Max wondered, was she actually being bothered by her?  
“she’s been approaching you a lot lately, and you are always quiet and shy afterwards”  
“It’s not that she’s bothering me, it’s just that she’s been weird”  
“If there’s a problem you can tell me, okay?” Kate assured.  
“thanks Kate.”  
She sat on the grass a few hours later, her camera on her hands and taking pictures. She saw a squirrel and leant forward to get a nice shot, when she couldn’t lean any further she laid on her stomach and fixed the focus, snapping her photos.  
She sighed, she knew she was running low on film for her camera and she would have to save for more. Max decided to cross that bridge when she got there.  
She rested her chin on her hands and her elbows on the grass, looking at the squirrel sniff around and eventually run away, she heard a click and a rustling behind her but didn’t turn.  
“hello Max, taking some nice shots?” Victoria told her, did she imagined that quiver on her voice?  
“Hi Victoria” she said, grabbing her pictures and moving to sit again “a few… mostly squirrels, clouds…”  
“may I?” she asked, just barely touching her hand when she took the photos from her “they are… really good. Not what I’d photograph but they suit you.”  
“Then what did you photographed if it wasn’t the squirrel?” Max asked and Victoria’s face grew redder by the second, first it was imperceptible but then it became too visible.  
“I- It was just… testing! yes, that! I was testing my… huh… new lens! that’s right!” she replied, laughing nervously after “why you ask anyway? I mean, my photography is not really your style... Whatever, turns out I had listened to that group you mentioned… what was it? Seth Meyer? Smith Smythers?”  
Max couldn’t believe she was witnessing something like that, Victoria was as red as a stoplight and completely unable to make a coherent sentence.  
“Victoria… Are you really Victoria?” Max asked hesitant.  
“What is that supposed to mean?” Victoria replied, now she was upset. Max knew she was going to obliterate her.  
“Huh, nothing… I was just… did aliens abducted you or something?” was all Max could think of.  
“What the hell, Max?!”  
“I want to believe! That’s all!” she justified herself.  
Suddenly Victoria got up, were those tears in her eyes?  
“you are unbelievable sometimes Caulfield…” just when she was putting away her camera a bunch of recently developed photos fell from her bag, all of them portraits of Max.  
“What? Those aren’t mine… Okay, just listen, listen.” as she knelt to pick them up several more fell “I can explain, okay? Just… fuck's sake, wait! just-”  
Max just stared at her, her brain completely shutting off, she was practically on autopilot and her best reaction for the current situation was to stand there dumbfounded.  
And just then she laughed. She laughed uncontrollably because nothing had sense at all, Victoria Chase had a bunch of pictures of her and was now fumbling with them and trying to fit them in her bag, and she was as red as before.  
And just then she became conscious of what she was doing, she was laughing with Victoria, at Victoria.  
“Anyway… bye!" she said, walking as fast as she could across the campus and as far as she could from Victoria.

The days after that incident were even weirder than before because now she was sure Victoria had been watching her for who knows how long.  
Max wasn’t the most agile person alive, if you add the nervousness factor to the equation you will get an extra-clumsy walking disaster.  
First she was walking down the corridor as any other day until she spotted Victoria exiting the restroom; Max immediately turned around only to crash against a locker door, she didn’t move though.  
“Pretend it was on purpose Max” she thought to herself as Victoria walked by, giving her a confused look.  
It was not the only time she crossed paths with her in the building but after the locker incident she had opted to walk like a newborn doe, in her best attempt of a confident walk, and generally stumbling with her own feet.  
She stuttered in class and couldn’t put two sentences together without embarrassing herself, she was a complete and utter mess.  
As she returned to her room she almost fell on the stairs, they were wet and slippery for some reason. She almost fell because someone managed to grab her on time, of course that someone had to be Victoria.  
“Careful, it’d be an ugly fall.” she commented, holding Max by the arm, her other hand behind Max’s shoulder.  
Max wanted to thank her, and tell her she had saved her neck but instead her head reconstructed her ideas in a different way.  
“Slippy…” she said.  
“Slippy?” Victoria repeated, she was smiling, was she mocking her?  
Max panicked then, she had just made a fool of herself in front of Vic, again.  
“Sloppy, I meant… like, I’m sloppy…” why was she still holding her? Max didn’t know but right now she had to focus on making it to her room alive.  
“okay then…” she said, fixing Max’s hoodie and turning around “try to get to your room safe.”  
Max did, and as soon as she closed her door she dropped on her bed, hearing a cracking sound.  
She turned around and found a piece of paper folded in three, now a little crumbled, it had two words written on the outside: “For Max.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's where the prequel ends. I hope you liked it and thanks for reading.  
> For those who are wondering, it was a reference to that meme, if you spotted it kudos to you. I'm considering on continuing the series after the letters, so if you have ideas you know they are more than welcomed.  
> Good vibes! Thanks again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! As always feedback is pretty much welcomed. There's still another chapter to come, so brace yourselves for that.  
> Good vibes and thanks again.


End file.
